Mergers are supposed to provide a great opportunity for those involved. A large
recruiting campaign is supposed to help the business. Re-organizations
are designed to simplify companies, but all of these events can create
some complicated problems. The most common challenge during cultural change
is the conflict and resistence that develops between the old values and
the new values.

In 2004, a major cultural change like this was underway at a large marketing services company based in
the United States. A lot of new people had been brought in from different
corporate cultures, and the competing views were producing conflict. The
company called on one of our partners, Ellen Moran, to find out what strategies
they needed to effectively lead their people.

"There seemed to be a lot of turmoil in the company," Moran said. "The client was
too traditional in their thinking, and we had to connect culturally to
these different world views."

Enter the VSQ

She suggested they do a cultural study, using iWAM and VSQ questionnaires to analyze the employees. Specifically,
she targeted the 30 high-potential employees in the leadership program.
She compared their profiles to the overall company culture, which she
found by randomly sampling 100 employees.

The VSQ, or Value Systems Questionnaire, provided a clear answer to why things were going wrong. Using the colors
associated with the Graves Value Systems model, Moran explained that three
separate value sets were clashing: green, orange, and blue. The leaders
needed to understand the differences within these groups, and how to manage
them. Moran's idea was that the company needed a "yellow" value
system, which is associated with balance, win-win partnerships, and uniting
any competing mindsets.

Together, the client and Moran implemented action learning groups across different levels of business,
benchmarks, and programming in educational pieces that is designed to
develop a yellow mindset. After one year, the company reported satisfaction
with jobEQ's tools, and ordered that the leadership development be expanded
from the 30 high-potential employees to all leaders in the company.

Organizational change can be an intimidating and complicated event, but with a helping hand, any organization
can make it through.